Courting Poppy
by Rayless Night
Summary: post trilogy. As always, the King sets out to seek his bride...


_Author's Warning: Whatever else you do, don't take this terribly seriously._

**Courting Poppy **

There really wasn't anything fun about it.

All species and civilizations have had their downfall. Lucifer thwarted God and consigned a third of the heavenly host to eternal anguish. Adam tried Eve's new favorite fruit and wound up being chased out of Eden by an angel with a burning blade. As for the dwarves, they alone knew where their species had gone wrong. Either it was just too ghastly to talk to outsiders about, or it had never happened at all. But the elves and the goblins? They could be considered in one fell swoop. They never talked about it either, mainly because neither race was exactly sure what had happened. Obviously the greatest First Father of the goblins had run afoul of the greatest First Father of the elves, but there weren't any historical records to offer details. Not that details were really necessary. All the two races really cared about was the result of their mutual downfall: millennia after millennia of nigh-on unending strife between them. And all this was beside the fact that the two races were dependent on each other.

But the truly exasperating outcome was all the trouble the goblin King had to go through merely to find a wife. The elf King most definitely did not have this difficulty; if he didn't keep so well hidden, he'd likely be tripping over human women gazing at him with starstruck eyes. No. The goblins were a great race, superior in every aspect, but it was a supremacy that came with a...price.

Because of these goblin...characteristics, the royal Maraks nearly always had to resort to kidnapping their brides. Occasionally there were exceptions, but every young Marak was trained on the general principle that he would be bodily dragging a reluctant beauty down into the depths of the earth, marrying her in a ceremony that involved considerable bloodshed, and spending the first few years of married life trying to get her to stop screaming when she woke up in the morning.

And really. There was nothing fun about it.

The goblin King studied Hallow Hill. He nodded to himself. It was a good idea, yes. Plenty of King's Wives, goblin or elf, had been found in this humble British mansion. And he couldn't have planned a better night. The silvery darkness of a moonlit night posed his elf-black eyes no difficulty, and he was walking unconcernedly across the Hill's front drive, gravel rattling quietly under his bootheels. He could hear the faint rumble of late-night traffic from the highway a mile or so off, and high in the black sky the blinking winglights of a 747 flashed like a constellation. Well, a constellation that made up for its small size in gaudiness and mobility.

Marak paused by one of the manor's black lower windows, tapping a considering finger against his shoulder. All asleep. Now how should he proceed? Richardson, the owner of Hallow Hill, slept on the upper story. But where might his two guests be sleeping? Marak frowned. He really should've run some sort of surveillance over the house, but Richardson's friends had dropped in just this afternoon, and this was the quickest Marak had been able to react; Cotinga had said one of the guests was an eighteen year old girl, unmarried girl, quite pretty girl, and Marak had been out of the door by sundown.

Now he hesitated. After all, shouldn't he be trying for an elf? Marak compressed his lips. No. He'd had it with trying to wed elves. He'd caught three up to date, and each one he'd eventually ended up marrying to high-ranking members of the Guard.

No, a human bride was the way to go. Humans are broad-minded, enraptured by diversity, able to find beauty everywhere. Marak stiffened slightly. Not that he was self-conscious. Of course not. It was a goblin's glory to be hideous. If the goblin King was particularly, er, hideous, why shouldn't all goblindom rejoice?

Swallowing a bit hard, Marak made a perimeter of the Hill, peering into all the windows. One of the guests -the father- was sleeping in a downstairs room, and in the room beside it...yes, it too had been made up for the evening. Marak peered harder. But where was its occupant? A spear of anger shot through Marak. She must have already been captured! That pretty-eyed, long-haired, harp-plinking elf King!

No, wait. The elf King was already married. That actress had been visiting Hallow Hill village last summer and had never been heard from again.

Hm. Well and good, but where was the goblin King's bride? The bed hadn't been slept in. But there was a suitcase propped against one wall. Puzzling.

Marak turned at the sound of lightly flapping wings. A nightingale with the head of a small vulture landed on his shoulder. Cotinga took a moment to clear her throat; her beak made it hard for her to talk when she was in bird form. "Marak, the King's Bride has been sighted near the St. Frithuswith graveyard. Jackdaw's watching her."

"St. Frithuswith's?" Marak repeated. "That's nearly three miles from here!"

"She has a bicycle. Apparently."

Marak frowned. "But what is she doing there? At eleven-thirty at night?"

"Goblin King, does it matter? Jackdaw's tightened the chain on her bicycle and switched the handlebars around. She can't get far."

Marak squared his jaw. "Yes. Yes, you're right."

Cotinga blinked affectionately up at him. He was a good soul. If goblin Kings were to be judged on their temerity, he was truly one of the greatest.

Marak turned on his heel and strode decisively back into the forest, Cotinga flapping off of his shoulder to above the tree line. A few feet into the woods, Marak found his horse, Pink Nose. This was, of course, the twenty-first century, the year two-thousand and six of Our Lord, and if the goblin Kings had wanted bicycles, roller skates, motorcycles or minivans, they could've had them.

Goblin Kings never did.

With a tap of Marak's left heel, Pink Nose eased to into his swift, quiet canter, threading his way through the trees, lifting his hooves high and clear of the underbrush, moving quick as a minnow through the inky blackness. Magic certainly did help sometimes.

oOo

St. Frithuswith's Church had stood in a little copse just east of the village for nearly nine hundred years, but it hadn't been in real use for about four centuries. At this juncture, it was little more than a heap of dilapidated walls. If there had ever been any historic artifacts, they'd been recovered centuries ago. The graveyard was a mess of broken, fallen down tombstones. Time's giant thumb had mostly smudged their dates all away. As Marak dismounted and waved Jackdaw off, he narrowed his eyes, surveying the ruin, looking for any signs of life.

A steady _bleep bleep bleep_ reached his ears.

Marak tensed. He he'd heard a sound like that only once before, when he'd been very young and he and his father had been prowling around the Hill. A dinner party had been going on, and he and Father had been planning the best way to have the roast goose fall in the plum pudding when an infernal _bleep bleep bleep_ had resounded from the kitchen.

Marak Snakeskin had lead his terrified son away from the house, soothing him all the while. It had been a long time before they'd been able to sit down together calmly and work things out. A human invention, Marak Snakeskin had explained patiently. For heating food quickly. A microwave.

Marak shuddered at the memory. There had been nothing micro about those bleeps. Then he blushed. What? A goblin King frightened by human inventions? Marak knew he was a brave man. All the goblin Kings had been brave men. But none of those brave goblin Kings had dealt with the adversity that plagued this Marak every moment of his life.

Marak squared his shoulders. Enough. Whatever happened, it couldn't be worse than the elf brides.

_Bleep bleep bleep._

Marak frowned. What could a microwave be doing out in the middle of the wilderness? Those things had to be plugged into walls. Unless...? No, had the humans found ways to carry those around too? Marak shook his head, searching for his bride in the moonlight.

_Bleep bleep bleep buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz._

There was a deep, protracted gasp. Marak whirled.

An eighteen year-old girl stood in the moonlight, her brown eyes wide and her short black hair messy. She was wearing a white tee shirt, denim shorts and flip flops. A camera hung from her neck, and there was a large black calculator in her left hand.

And amazement in her eyes.

Marak was fumbling through his brain, searching for the correct spell to knock her unconscious, when she gasped, "A ghost! Oh please -are you really a ghost?"

Marak slowed his fumbling for a moment. Goblins were sometimes mistaken for ghosts, or demons, or humans with very unenviable skin conditions. But he was wearing his voluminous hooded black cloak, and she of course could not yet see his face.

"Yes," the girl was whispering, listening as her calculator buzzed yet more fiercely. "It's going crazy. You must be a ghost!"

Marak slowed in his fumbling a bit more. By the Sword, what was _wrong_ with her voice? No wait, was she an American?

It was the girl's turn to fumble, but she did it with her camera. "Who are you?" she asked eagerly. "Are you a monk? Were you murdered? Dja mind if I take your picture?"

"Mmhm," Marak said vaguely, making a pass with his left hand. The camera cord snapped, and the camera went out of her hands, achieving a rise of ten feet and a run of thirty-five. It crashed into little pieces against one of the church's walls, not before it had sent off a flash across the night. Marak glanced at it with satisfaction. Okay, that was good. Now what was that sleeping spell again?

"Okay, no piccy," the girl rattled off. "That's cool." Now she was fumbling with her pockets. She pulled out a pencil, stuck it between her teeth, and fumbled for her notepad. "When'dja die? 'For ten ikthy' ix o' fter?"

Marak put a hand to his suddenly throbbing forehead. For whatever reason, he could only remember the elvish spell for removing worms from deer.

In the awkward silence, the girl shifted her buzzing calculator to the crook of her elbow, took the pencil in her left hand and the notebook in her right. She scribbled the date and the time. "I'm sorry. I wanted to know when you died. Before ten sixty-six or after?"

Marak cleared his throat. Of course, he didn't need magic to knock a girl unconscious, but he was a bit reluctant to resort to violence. Moreover, he wasn't exactly sure how to do it. Goblin Kings were taught a lot of interesting things, but braining unsuspecting humans was not, generally, one of them.

The girl smiled cheerily at him. "I'm so excited! I can't believe it, I've never met a ghost before! Dad's been taking me out for years, but finally-" Her eyes rounded. "Wait a minute...maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. Am I being too forward? Wait-" Her round eyes went even rounder. "Maybe you only speak Olde English! Oh -ah- 'In Aprill wist a wosten woosten'-"

"Heh?" was all Marak could manage.

"Oh." She looked fretful. "You don't understand Chaucer."

"_Chaucer_?" Marak repeated incredulously.

"Okay, I'll try _Beowulf_." She cleared her throat. "Modo ofo wodo kuninga...Uh... ...dag... Herorotgrendil...thane... Hrothgar...funden bladda woodu."

"I speak English," Marak said quickly, before this could go any further.

The girl beamed. "Snap!"

"Heh?"

The girl poised her pencil. "So, what's your name? When did you die?"

Marak frowned and decided that they might as well clear a few things up while he decided how exactly to deal with her. "I'm not dead."

From beatifically ecstatic, her face fell to utter dejection. "You're not?" She put the pencil in her right hand and frowned down at her calculator. "But...but my EMF detector says you are."

Marak blinked irritably. _No_ one insists to the goblin King that he's dead. "Your what?"

"My EMF detector." Politely, she held it up for his inspection. "It found you. It read the geomagnetic and electromagnetic fields in this graveyard, and you were right here."

"You're right here," Marak mentioned, in case there was any confusion on her part. "And you're not dead."

The girl sighed heavily, her eyes downcast. "It's supposed to find ghosts."

"Why are you looking for ghosts?"

"Because I want to find them. I got straight-As senior year, so Dad said he'd take me to England to look at the old battlefields and villages. America's got battlefields too, but England's so much older. I was hoping for some really ancient spooks, pre-Conqueror guys who could tell me what it was like riding out with Boadicea and thumbing their noses at Caesar."

"Oh."

She looked up wistfully. "You never thumbed your nose at Caesar?"

Marak could've told her that his ancestor, Marak Batears, had, but he didn't.

Slowly, the girl frowned. "If you're not a ghost, what are you?"

Right, what was that spell again?

She smiled. "You look kind of like a Nazgul."

"I've read Tolkien," Marak mentioned offhandedly, trying to stall for time. "Very inaccurate."

The girl gasped. "Is that a horse back there? Aw, oo's a cute ittle pony?"

Marak made a swift decision. He would knock her out on his own. Just as he was making a fist, he recalled that a concussion could result in death. Well, he had spells to counteract that. If he could remember them.

"Uhm," he said after a moment, "come with me."

The girl frowned. "Where?"

Marak fell back on an old goblin King standby. "It's too late for you to be out alone. Let me take you home."

The girl raised her eyebrows. "You knew I was staying at the Hill?" She gasped. "Are you a psychic?"

"Uh..." Marak frowned, yet again. And then, because he was tired of all this and he honestly couldn't see how it would make things worse, he said, "I'm a goblin."

The girl's face went blank. Then she frowned. "Hm. I always thought goblins were little."

Marak was affronted. "Very few of us are what you'd call 'little'."

"And they have hard heads and soft feet. And no toes."

"As a rule," Marak said with dignity, "we have toes."

"And they hate rhymes. If you want to defeat them, you just start saying a rhyme. 'Twinkle, twinkle little bat'-"

Human education concerning goblins was appalling, all the goblin history books agreed on that. Marak tried not to let it bother him. "Well, whatever you think is-"

"Do you have a king?" the girl asked eagerly, eyes shining with hope.

Marak was almost flattered. "Of course."

The girl squealed with joy. "Is he really Jareth?"

A long silence reigned between them.

It was a very, very good thing that Marak did not know who Jareth was.

"Would you like to see the goblin kingdom?" Marak asked conversationally.

"Of course! Only -you smashed my camera."

"Oh, don't worry," Marak said, glad he wouldn't have to knock her out. "You won't need it." Solicitously, he lifted her onto Pink Nose's saddle, waiting until she was secure before he climbed up behind.

As they were riding through the moonlight, the girl turned to look up at him. "My name's Poppy Cox."

"Hello," he said politely.

"What's _your_ name?"

"Marak."

"Marak what?"

"Just Marak."

"Goblins don't have last names?"

"Generally they don't. And certainly not the Kings."

Poppy's eyes rounded. "You're the king?"

Marak nodded. "Goblin Kings are always named Marak."

The girl thought about that. "That must drive your history students insane. I remember when I was in tenth grade, we were learning about the Glorious Revolution and stuff, and, y'know, everything started with all those Henrys and then there was Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart and Mary and William -other way round, I s'pose- and then James showed up and everything was just James and Charles, James and Charles, James and Charles- Shoot, kings are always named Charles! I remember in eighth grade we learned about a King Charles that was so-"

"Yes, well. We don't have quite that problem. The Kings are distinguished by physical characteristics."

"Oh. Like Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat and Charles the-"

"No. Not like that. Like Marak Dogclaw and Marak Sixfinger." Just about then, the goblin King realized he had committed a blunder of colossal proportions.

"Oh," Poppy was saying, reasoning it out. "Okay, I guess that makes sense. So-" She looked back up at him.

Marak tensed.

"Which Marak are you?"

Marak took a deep breath. He couldn't lie. No other goblin King had ever lied. But then, no other goblin King had ever been-

"Marak Duckbill."


End file.
